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Bleah, landlady got a dog
I just have to rant, here. Our landlady is a complete flake. She is terrible
with money, in debt up to her ears, completely irresponsible. She has three kids who I estimate to be around 8, 10, and 12, and they've all been in trouble with the police, for graffiti and shoplifting and things. Her parents live next door and used to own this house and are overwhelmingly good folks, and have seen to it that things get fixed around here and so forth. The landlady is also scared of our Great Dane because she's big. If I say she's not mean, she just says, "Well, she's big". When she visits I have to shut Saskia in the bedroom because otherwise all three kids just scream any time Saskia moves, and the landlady hides behind things. It all makes Saskia very nervous. So I heard from the upstairs neighbor that just after making her second move in two months to a temporary small apartment with all three kids and the boyfriend, and leaving a ton of her brand new stuff behind because she was "too tired" to move it all again, she asked the neighbor to lend her money, went to Holiday on Ice, and got a puppy, all in the same week. Well, now I have seen the puppy. Down by the supermarket, I saw a tiny puppy standing by itself, clearly scared, on the street corner. I and several other people stopped and looked at it. A little girl appeared and called it, and it coincidentally started away so she called it again and started sort of shuffling that way. It almost ran into traffic, and I heard an adult say something sharply. The little girl ran over and grabbed it. It turned out to be the landlady's puppy. She was amazed I thought it should be on a leash "at this age"; she thought that would damage its throat, so I told her to get the petstore's recommendation on how to use a wide, loose collar. She claimed it was three weeks old, and reacted to my saying that is WAY to young to be away from its mother by giving a "what can you do?" shrug and saying, "Well, that's how old I got it". Poor little thing. It's probably some sort of shepherd/lab mix, very cute, but very scared. It was shaking and shaking, which she hadn't noticed. I'll bet she hasn't done any of the right vet visits or had any shots and I shudder to think what it might be eating. But it's very, very cute. I dread the first phone calls. I can see it now. "What do we do about this/that?" "How do we stop it going to the bathroom in the house?" "Why is it sick?" All culminating, I am absolutely certain, in her standing on my doorstep within a few weeks with three bawling little girls telling me I have to take it off her hands. Arrrrgh! No idea what I'll do. I can't do that, I just went through the puppy thing with Saskia (now 22 months) but she'd probably refuse to take it to a shelter even though the euthanasia rate here is very low and it's a cute, cute puppy. Just had to vent about it. --Katrina |
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Bleah, landlady got a dog
White Monkey wrote:
I just have to rant, here. Our landlady is a complete flake. She is terrible with money, in debt up to her ears, completely irresponsible. She has three kids who I estimate to be around 8, 10, and 12, and they've all been in trouble with the police, for graffiti and shoplifting and things. Her parents live next door and used to own this house and are overwhelmingly good folks, and have seen to it that things get fixed around here and so forth. The landlady is also scared of our Great Dane because she's big. If I say she's not mean, she just says, "Well, she's big". When she visits I have to shut Saskia in the bedroom because otherwise all three kids just scream any time Saskia moves, and the landlady hides behind things. It all makes Saskia very nervous. So I heard from the upstairs neighbor that just after making her second move in two months to a temporary small apartment with all three kids and the boyfriend, and leaving a ton of her brand new stuff behind because she was "too tired" to move it all again, she asked the neighbor to lend her money, went to Holiday on Ice, and got a puppy, all in the same week. Well, now I have seen the puppy. Down by the supermarket, I saw a tiny puppy standing by itself, clearly scared, on the street corner. I and several other people stopped and looked at it. A little girl appeared and called it, and it coincidentally started away so she called it again and started sort of shuffling that way. It almost ran into traffic, and I heard an adult say something sharply. The little girl ran over and grabbed it. It turned out to be the landlady's puppy. She was amazed I thought it should be on a leash "at this age"; she thought that would damage its throat, so I told her to get the petstore's recommendation on how to use a wide, loose collar. She claimed it was three weeks old, and reacted to my saying that is WAY to young to be away from its mother by giving a "what can you do?" shrug and saying, "Well, that's how old I got it". Poor little thing. It's probably some sort of shepherd/lab mix, very cute, but very scared. It was shaking and shaking, which she hadn't noticed. I'll bet she hasn't done any of the right vet visits or had any shots and I shudder to think what it might be eating. But it's very, very cute. I dread the first phone calls. I can see it now. "What do we do about this/that?" "How do we stop it going to the bathroom in the house?" "Why is it sick?" All culminating, I am absolutely certain, in her standing on my doorstep within a few weeks with three bawling little girls telling me I have to take it off her hands. Arrrrgh! No idea what I'll do. I can't do that, I just went through the puppy thing with Saskia (now 22 months) but she'd probably refuse to take it to a shelter even though the euthanasia rate here is very low and it's a cute, cute puppy. Just had to vent about it. Ach. Kind of like watching a slow motion train wreck, and being entirely helpless to prevent it. Because you're thinking ahead, you have some time to prepare yourself mentally and stiffen your spine against the day when she tries to palm off the puppy (with a whole library of problems and issues caused by early mistreatment). Practice saying to yourself, "If I wanted a second dog I would already have one. My obligation is to the family I've already got. I have a hard enough time doing right by Saskia and Walter as it is, I can't possibly take on another. The number for the animal shelter is xxx-xxxx." Also, enlist your husband's help for moral support. When I made the decision to get a third dog, I knew what I wanted was a small, athletic dog, a height dog for flyball. But when word leaked out that I had a slot open in my household I came under immediate pressure on all sides from people wanting me to take "my boss' sister's lab, who bit their toddler", or, "My aunt's 7 year-old corgi bassett mix (hey, he's short, anyways) - her new boyfriend doesn't like him"... People came out of the woodwork with needy dogs stuck in bad, or maybe just inconvenient situations. Even people from the flyball club - the same folks complaining about our lack of height dogs - felt the need to "mention" available dogs (ENORMOUS dogs!). Dogs completely inappropriate for our household, for what I wanted, and still, I felt SO guilty. Talking to my husband helped a lot. He kept reminding me that I could have any dog I wanted, but that would be it. Three dogs is the limit in our municipality. That our dogs are our dogs until death do us part, so I'd better think long and hard. That *my* dog was out there, that we'd find him. I finally found Cooper, my JRT, 12 weeks old at the time, and being re-homed because his too-stubby tail spoiled him as a show prospect. And he was/is perfect. But my relationships with some of the folks who were especially persistent in their attempts at guilt-tripping me into taking this dog, or that one (so that they could play hero), have definitely been damaged. Just keep reminding yourself of your priorities, and if the huge commitment of taking on a second dog isn't one of them, keep practicing saying, "No, I'm sorry, I can't". Kathleen |
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Bleah, landlady got a dog
Because you're thinking ahead, you have some time to prepare yourself
mentally and stiffen your spine against the day when she tries to palm off the puppy (with a whole library of problems and issues caused by early mistreatment). Practice saying to yourself, "If I wanted a second dog I would already have one. My obligation is to the family I've already got. I have a hard enough time doing right by Saskia and Walter as it is, I can't possibly take on another. The number for the animal shelter is xxx-xxxx." Thank you, yes, I'm already trying to be able to say this. I wish it was a breed I hate instead of a cute-as-all-heck mixed breed! But I also keep reminding myself that it'll probably have health problems from being taken from teh dam so early, too. Can't afford/deal with that--Saskia has her own problems and we really can't add to the burden on that level. Nope, I can do this, I can not have this dog! Also, enlist your husband's help for moral support. Oh, no worries there! He is 100% against the whole thing, too. I brought up the inevitability of her trying to dump it on us back a week ago when I found out she had a puppy. I Will Be Strong. Thanks, Katrina |
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Bleah, landlady got a dog
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Bleah, landlady got a dog
Hi Sorry to butt in but couldn't help it.
You're not butting in. You're responding to a public post on a discussion newsgroup--feel free! For that puppy's sake if the land lady does ask to take the puppy out of her hands maybe it'll be better for the puppy if you do that & get a good home for it. Just incase it happens you can call & look around for a good family who would be interested in it. The way things seem to be I won't be surprise if that poor puppy ends up with distemper. 3 wks is really too young to be away from it's mother & definitely too young to be outside. If you say no to her you don't know what will happen. Well, I am tempted to think this way, but I just can't afford right now, time-or-money-wise, to take on a new puppy with probable health problems. I don't know anyone in the market for a dog and they aren't just traded around constantly like in the States--meaning a "free to good home" ad might or might not get any responses. What I WILL do if (when... sigh!) the time comes is offer to her that while she keeps looking after the pup and looks for a new home for it I will also look for a new home for it. I'd bet it would never occur to her, for example, to call a few vets or the good people at the Animal Ambulance service to see if there's somewhere that routinely takes in pups like this. We don't have an equivalent of the pound--animals that end up in the asiels (literally, asylums, as in "to seek asylum" not "mental asylum") are not routinely put down. There is no big stray problem here (unlike with cats). So if I can get her to take him (I think it's a him) to somewhere like that he'll be fine, barring any serious health problems from being taken so young. I can check around more, ehhm, responsibly than she can as to where she might take him. By the way, he did look AWFULLY young to me, and that's why I asked her about his age, but I'm pretty darn certain he wasn't 3 weeks old. For one thing she'd already had him a week. My guess based on his appearance would be 5 weeks, possibly even 6. Still way too young, of course. --Katrina |
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Bleah, landlady got a dog
On Wed, 28 Dec 2005 15:12:47 +0100, "White Monkey"
wrote: I dread the first phone calls. I can see it now. "What do we do about this/that?" "How do we stop it going to the bathroom in the house?" "Why is it sick?" All culminating, I am absolutely certain, in her standing on my doorstep within a few weeks with three bawling little girls telling me I have to take it off her hands. Arrrrgh! No idea what I'll do. I can't do that, I just went through the puppy thing with Saskia (now 22 months) but she'd probably refuse to take it to a shelter even though the euthanasia rate here is very low and it's a cute, cute puppy. If it were me, I'd take the dog if it were still a puppy and find it another home rather than keep it. Even if you have to take it to the shelter because you don't have room to foster, the cute, cute puppies find homes pretty easily. If the dog gets to be a big misbehaving and not so cute dog before the idiot dumps it, it's going to be that much worse for the dog. Start checking out local shelters for no kill options or checking into rescues if she starts asking lots of advice so you will know options to give her should it come down to needing the dog to be taken off her hands. Once she is in that state, it's not likely she'll wait for you to research other places than your house for dumping and she is your landlady, after all. Having an address of a no kill shelter or the number of a rescue who will pick the dog up might come in really handy. -- Paula Persons with names like Sierra, Sequoia, Auburn, and Rainbow can't sing the Blues no matter how many men they shoot in Memphis. |
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Bleah, landlady got a dog
I dread the first phone calls. I can see it now. "What do we do about
this/that?" "How do we stop it going to the bathroom in the house?" "Why is it sick?" All culminating, I am absolutely certain, in her standing on my doorstep within a few weeks with three bawling little girls telling me I have to take it off her hands. Arrrrgh! No idea what I'll do. I can't do that, I just went through the puppy thing with Saskia (now 22 months) but she'd probably refuse to take it to a shelter even though the euthanasia rate here is very low and it's a cute, cute puppy. If it were me, I'd take the dog if it were still a puppy and find it another home rather than keep it. Even if you have to take it to the shelter because you don't have room to foster, the cute, cute puppies find homes pretty easily. I wish this were feasible, but it's not. I have a toddler. I have just moved to a new house and am still unpacking. It's not the space--plenty of space for a puppy. I'd love to get Saskia a buddy, too, and a sprightly little (probably grow up to only 40 pounds or so) mixed breed like this would be perfect. If I took the little guy in, though, first thing I'd do would be take him to the vet, and we can't afford that right now: we've had, since the move a couple of months ago, one long bout of Mystery Sneezing (cat), a severely cut foot (dog), an infection in said foot involving a half-day stay at the vet's and very minor surgery (and roll after roll of bandaging, and antibiotics, etc., etc.), sudden fleas from the upstairs cat and thus Frontline for both pets, Mystery Colitis (dog, three visits and a course of salazosulfapyridinum, not cheap for such a big dog), a new refrigerator (the one here belongs to the landlady and she needs it back NOW), winter shoes (I kept slipping on the ice and falling down) and tougher stroller--the list goes on. We don't have ANY extra money and I'd like to save the overdraft protection in case there are any more unexpected events with OUR animals. Thank goodness for the Dutch socialized medical system: WE'RE covered completely if anything should happen to a human. Meanwhile, I also don't have the time right now to keep the little fella right by my side and trot him out every time he shows signs of needing to go. I'm alone with the baby all day and sometimes I need to be getting him down for a nap, feeding him, doing dishes, etc., not to mention going out to do the grocery shopping. Also not to mention that after 14 months I finally got the baby sleeping through the night, and have in the months since averaged a whole six hours of sleep a night with four of that usually in a row, and am NOT eager to go right back to getting up all night for potty trips. In addition, in case anyone mentions crate training to cover that situation, the only crate I have is suitable for an adult Great Dane, and I am not buying one just to try to rehome someone else's pup. The cat carrier might do in a pinch but I think is really too small for him. If the dog gets to be a big misbehaving and not so cute dog before the idiot dumps it, it's going to be that much worse for the dog. Yes, but I'm not going to phone her up and tell her she shouldn't keep it, so what am I supposed to do about that? Start checking out local shelters for no kill options or checking into rescues This is the Netherlands. There is one kind of shelter and they don't do routine euthanasia. If she needs to find the pup a home (which I rather hope she does) one phone call to the animal ambulance folks should do it--they'll tell me where she can take the pup and that'll be that; he'll be the dog of the week in the paper the next day, I guarantee it. The shelters here aren't overflowing with puppies like in the States. Sure, there are too many casually bred dogs, like anywhere else, but no stray problem, at least in town. There may be some sort of problem with that out by the farms, but I rather doubt it: dogs on farms here tend to be working dogs, and I sure haven't seen a lot of them running around without a job. so you will know options to give her should it come down to needing the dog to be taken off her hands. Once she is in that state, it's not likely she'll wait for you to research other places than your house for dumping What choice would she have? She's clueless but she's a nice person; she wouldn't dump the pup on the street and would be absolutely horrified at the idea of having a vet put him down or something. She'd wait eagerly as long as it took for me to solve her problem for her. That's really the one plus point here. Another more unfortunate factor, though, is that she's likely to have gone and paid money for the little guy, probably between 20 and 100 Euros if the very occasional ad in the paper is anything to go by, and she's really a tightass about that: she'd want to make her money back. I am NOT going to buy the dog. However, she is also aware that things can cost more if you don't cut your losses, so I'm sure if it comes up I can fairly easily convince her that just waiting a day or two for me to find out where she can take him and drop him off, and make the arrangements for her, would save her money in the long run. and she is your landlady, after all. What does that have to do with it? The rental contract does not stipulate that I have to take in unwanted pets. Having an address of a no kill shelter or the number of a rescue who will pick the dog up might come in really handy. Paula True, but we don't have places like "the pound". If the pup needs a home it should be a matter of a couple of phone calls, possibly just one, to turn up a shelter with a space for the little guy, and off she'll go with him (I don't have a car). Thanks for your input, and in many situation that would all be the best thing to do, but I think it'll work out OK in this case without me needing to take him in. --Katrina |
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Bleah, landlady got a dog
On Sat, 31 Dec 2005 09:14:04 +0100, "White Monkey"
wrote: so you will know options to give her should it come down to needing the dog to be taken off her hands. Once she is in that state, it's not likely she'll wait for you to research other places than your house for dumping What choice would she have? She's clueless but she's a nice person; she wouldn't dump the pup on the street and would be absolutely horrified at the idea of having a vet put him down or something. I hope you are right. I may have done too much rescue because I have ceased to be at all surprised at what perfectly nice people will do with dogs that have peed on the carpet one time too many. Add in the kids and lack of training and there are all kinds of things that could happen that I would make a clueless but nice person decide the dog had to go, even if it had to die. In fact, it usually is the cost of euthanasia and a need to deny what will ultimately happen to the dog that keeps people from having a vet put their dogs down rather than the reaction they might have had to euthanasia before the dog crossed the line (and it's always the dog that crossed the line, not the people who messed up) in the people I have worked with. -- Paula Persons with names like Sierra, Sequoia, Auburn, and Rainbow can't sing the Blues no matter how many men they shoot in Memphis. |
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Bleah, landlady got a dog
so you will know options to give her should it come down to needing
the dog to be taken off her hands. Once she is in that state, it's not likely she'll wait for you to research other places than your house for dumping What choice would she have? She's clueless but she's a nice person; she wouldn't dump the pup on the street and would be absolutely horrified at the idea of having a vet put him down or something. I hope you are right. I may have done too much rescue because I have ceased to be at all surprised at what perfectly nice people will do with dogs that have peed on the carpet one time too many. Add in the kids and lack of training and there are all kinds of things that could happen that I would make a clueless but nice person decide the dog had to go, even if it had to die. In fact, it usually is the cost of euthanasia and a need to deny what will ultimately happen to the dog that keeps people from having a vet put their dogs down rather than the reaction they might have had to euthanasia before the dog crossed the line (and it's always the dog that crossed the line, not the people who messed up) in the people I have worked with. Paula Well, I see your point, but she simply would not dump the dog on the street or in a dumpster or something, I can guarantee that. If she did decide to "dump" the dog she might go so far as to abandon it inside a pet store or vet's office, or tie it to a fence outside a vet's or something, and it would be picked up and taken to one of the shelters in no time at all. With no microchip they'd probably only run the "found" ads for a week before putting it up for adoption. I do guarantee, though, that if it came to that she would give me one more chance at it, so of course if I get an "or else" call of that nature I would feel I'd have to deal with it in person, for the dog's sake. But I know this woman pretty well now, as far as this sort of thing goes, and if she asks me to "solve this" for her she'll let me do it, and as I said that should take no more than a few phone calls. I have looked around and there are four shelters in this town (and as I said they do not practice routine euthanasia), and there is always the Animal Ambulance service--where I lived before, someone found a Newfoundland pup, maybe 9 months old, and called them. The Animal Ambulance came right out and my neighbor, a driver for them, kept the dog for half a day while they found a shelter to take him in. Of course, there's also the possibility I could wake up and find it in my back yard one morning with her pretending it ISN'T her puppy and she has no idea where it came from, but I don't think she'll do that. But she would before she'd put it in a dumpster or something. It'll be OK, unless the poor thing just gets sick because she didn't get it its shots or something and doesn't get it to the vet in time. She may or may not call me in such a case. If she did I'd make damn sure she took it to the vet. The calls I foresee are more about mouthing, chewing, and housetraining, though, and then she'll start thinking it's all too much work, and then she'll ask me if I want a dog, and I'll tell her I don't but I will get back to her within a couple of hours and tell her where she could take him where they'd keep him and find him a nice home. The shelters here do socializing, vet work (even complicated and costly vet work) and obedience training. They're very dedicated about getting the dogs homes. --Katrina |
#10
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Bleah, landlady got a dog
i
Am fortunate! Youvè seen me, --__ only one self, and i have senn ALL. of you, So I AM more fortunate than you ARe! isis is si soos.maszeus that is or is it inaana is,it angelico ISIS! |
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